Faculty Book: Talal Asad

Talal Asad

On Suicide Bombing
(Columbia University Press, 2008)

Asad’s book questions our assumptions about morally good and morally evil ways of killing. Is there any such thing as a “religiously motivated terrorism”? If so, then what makes it religious? Has the suicide bomber earned his iconic status in the “Islamic culture of death”? How does this type of terrorism compare with other kinds of mass violence? Also included is a discussion of the human response to suicide of any sort, terrorism included. Talal Asad is a distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center.